


Deep In My Bones, I Can Feel You

by Velocity_Owl87



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Conflict of Interests, Eventual Relationships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Multi, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5977243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velocity_Owl87/pseuds/Velocity_Owl87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh Becket has just lost his brother and co-pilot. Angela Hansen has lost both her co-pilot and her husband and the war still rages on. </p><p>The PPDC needs pilots to continue the war and Marshall Pentecost thinks that Raleigh and Angela could be compatible due to their experience with grief. Both agree due to their need to get over their grief and find an anchor. </p><p>Neither expected it to work as well as it did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deep In My Bones, I Can Feel You

Raleigh took a deep breath to ease the hollow ache in his chest that he knew, without anyone telling him, would be there until he died. 

They never really addressed this part in training. How the loss of a co-pilot would ache like a motherfucker until the other pilot finally died. It was true that there was only one other pilot who had survived. But no one knew exactly who it was or how they had coped. 

Raleigh thought it was bullshit and clutched at his chest harder, his fingers digging into his chest hard enough to leave crescent shaped indents in the skin he would find later and blink in confusion at. At that time, the pain helped get him grounded and not lost in the remnants of the neural handshake he no longer had with Yancy. He was in danger of drifting off and losing himself. He couldn’t allow that. Not when he had Jaz to support and they had promised each other, long ago, that they would see the end of the war. He had promised Yancy. 

And now Yancy was gone and Raleigh wasn’t sure if he had the strength to get out of the base hospital and go through it again and again. 

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, listening for the echoing rhythm of his heartbeat and started counting the beats. Even though it felt like his chest was splintering with each heartbeat. Even though he was dragging in ragged breaths that felt like they were tearing his throat open as he took them. 

It hurt. It all hurt. Like crystalline shards driving themselves deep into the tissue of his body, the agony was almost unbearable and he wished that it was all over and done with. Yet he still forced himself to keep on breathing in a steady rhythm, over and over again, until he wasn’t feeling the hollow hurt of sorrow caving his ribcage in. 

Once the pain and the darkness had receded to the back of his mind, he opened his eyes and looked up to meet the eyes of his superior. 

Stacker Pentecost’s face gave nothing away, those dark eyes unfathomable as carved onyx as he handed Raleigh one of the PPDC flags. 

Raleigh took it and for a second he was afraid that there was going to be conversation and he just  _ knew _ in that moment that there was no way in hell he would have been able to handle that. If Marshall Pentecost said anything, Raleigh knew that he would just open his mouth and go mad. 

Maybe the Marshall knew that it was going to happen. So he didn’t stay anything to that effect. 

He simply took in Raleigh’s battered and greyish skin, the hollows under his eyes before he nodded. 

“Do you still want to be part of the PPDC? Or Do you want your discharge papers?”

Raleigh was taken aback by the bluntness, but the anger that filled his chest made him forget his grief even if it was for a minute of two. He realized much later that was the reason why Pentecost was so ruthless. If he was left to wallow, he’d just stay there and never come out of it. Possibly even following Yancy to the death. 

“Give me a week to sort my affairs. I’ll be back to pilot my girl.”

Pentecost’s eyes gleamed, but other than that, there was no sign that he had expected that response. 

“We’ll be expecting you in the Shatterdome on Monday, at fifteen hundred hours sharp.”

That was the end of the conversation before the Marshall turned on his heel and walked away. 

~*~*~*~*

He was hoping that Jaz would take the news a little better, but judging by the mulish look in her tired blue eyes, she was livid. She had let her dirty blonde hair down and had poured herself a shot in preparation for the showdown that both siblings had been expecting. 

“They took Yance from us and you  _ still _ want to go back and do their dirty work for them? Are you insane, Rals?”

She had shouted at him angrily as she had pointed to the official portrait of Yancy and the folded up PPDC flag along with the votive candle lit in front of it. 

Raleigh sighed as he raked his hands through his hair and looked at his tired little sister. Always tired. She worked as much as the other women in the factories, despite Raleigh and Yancy begging her not to since they made more than enough for her to do anything else.

She had refused and kept on working, her natural aptitude for engineering giving her the management position in the factory. She worked long hours and Raleigh couldn’t argue with her when she pointed out all of the things that she had achieved doing exactly that.

“Look, it’s all I know how to do at this point in the war, Jaz. What am I going to do if I walk away? Rivet a useless wall? I have to do this, Jaz. Please understand-”

“Understand? Rals, that’s all I have been. Ever since you two joined up, that’s all I’ve been! Don’t you think that every time I see any of those monsters I worry about you coming home? That every time that stupid alarm rings I wonder if I’m going to lose my brothers?”

Jaz’s voice wasn’t loud any longer. It was a ragged whisper that cut Raleigh to the core, but he couldn’t back down. 

“We lost Yance, Raleigh. I can’t lose another brother. Raleigh,  _ please.” _

Raleigh took a deep breath and sighed heavily. His instincts were at war with each other. He needed to go back. He had given his word. But his sister was the only family that he had left. How the hell was he supposed to choose between his duty and his family?

Yet when he asked himself the question, he found out that he already knew the answer. He knew if he stayed, it would eat him alive, not being out there, not fighting to make his brother’s life have some meaning than just a number in an increasingly difficult war.He also knew that he would fade away. He wasn’t civilian material. 

Even if he did get a job with Jaz or went as a riveter, it would eat him up inside. He needed to go back or he would lose himself and be no more alive than if he was killed in action. And even with Yancy’s imprint in his head keeping him grounded for now, it wasn’t enough to continue that for the rest of his life. 

“I can’t, Jaz. I can’t come back. I have to go.”

Jaz had tears in her eyes at that.

“But why?”

Raleigh turned his head away.

“Because I’m afraid it won’t be enough. That nothing else will be enough.”

Jaz let out a choked laugh that was as hollow as his chest.

“Do what you have to do, Raleigh. Just come back.”

~*~*~*~*

Angela rubbed her face roughly as she looked at herself in the cheap tin mirror. She was glad to see that she didn’t look as old as she felt. Ever since Herc…

She bit her bottom lip and shook her head, sending droplets of water flying everywhere that she ruefully wiped up with a small rag before patting her own face dry. She scooped out a small bit of the lotion that her mother had thoughtfully hoarded before all of the rationing started taking place and carefully rubbed it in, smiling ruefully at the faint freckling on her skin.

It was the only luxury she allowed herself after she became a Jaeger pilot and Scott’s partner. She couldn’t let herself indulge in feminine fripperies when there was a war going on out there that they desperately needed to win. Although deep down, she mourned the scented soaps, the light cotton sundresses, the perfume, and the luxury of long baths with scented oils. They had been things she had loved and that Herc loved giving to her when they had been married. 

The only thing that she didn’t strip herself off was her hair. Thick,long, and a deep auburn, it was still her crowning treasure and despite keeping it in braids not as complicated as Sasha Kaidonovsky’s, it was still a sight to behold. Despite the time and effort it took to care for her hair, she wouldn’t cut it.

It was the last thing that Herc had touched when she was finally led to him in that overcrowded school gym. He had smiled at her, despite his face being half a ruin and had touched the coils of it, dying with that smile on his face. 

They had told her afterward that he had held on just to see her. There had been no way that he would have survived as long as he had otherwise. It was knowledge that was both bitter and comforting to her at the same time and that was why she wouldn’t cut her hair. Chuck seemed to understand, even though he too, had voiced his surprise at her following every other military requirement that was asked of her except that one.

Maybe someday, when it still wasn’t so raw and painful, she would explain. 

Maybe when the war was over and he didn’t need to be piloting jaegers like his mother did. 

And maybe wouldn’t again, since her pilot was dead. Penelope had been her cousin’s wife. Claire had died in one of the early attacks and Penelope had joined up a little after she had. The bond over Claire had made them have a workable compatibility. But Penelope had been the dominant one of the two, despite being much younger. Penelope had been a dark haired and dark eyed slip of a girl, too young for the dead look that had taken residence in her large eyes. A look that only went away when she was in the middle of battle, pushing their nearly torn apart Jaeger for one last push. 

They had nailed the Kaiju. But Penelope hadn’t survived, taking on the strain when Angela had been knocked unconscious. Angela had mourned her, given the time that they had before another Kaiju breached the shore. So she was pulled back in and tested for compatibility with another pilot.

Who turned out to be Scott Hansen, her brother in law.

Someone that she wasn’t compatible with at all, despite the strength of their feelings toward the dearly departed Hercules Hansen. The Australian shatterdome was getting desperate and she had to admit that she was too. She didn’t want to get pushed back into a support role and lose her pension. Chuck was still in the prep school of the academy, much too young to be actively considered for a Ranger position. 

Not only was she concerned about practicalities, but also her own precarious emotional and mental state. 

She was all too aware of the close eye they were keeping on her, looking for signs that she was going to crack and be useless as a Ranger and she wasn’t going to give them the chance for that to happen. She needed this too much. Without the PPDC, she had nothing to fight for. Chuck would be left on his own and that was the last thing that she wanted to happen. 

Chuck was still her baby. The last link she had to Herc and she was damned if she wasn’t going to leave him adrift, bewildered and angry that his dad had been killed in a war that had been going on for as long as he could remember. No. 

Setting her mouth, she coiled the braid on the back of her head and pinned it, leaving the little sink area before picking up her dark blue uniform coat and tousling the hair of Chuck, who was busy reading a jaeger pilot magazine with Max right beside him. 

“Gerroff, mum!” He squeaked out, voice still childishly high as he protested her messing with his hair. 

“Start your homework, allright? I have a meeting with the Marshall.”

She replied as she buttoned up the coat and straightened up the medals she had received for the defence of Sydney once Lucky Seven had been downed. Chuck’s eyes immediately went to the medal and he huffed at its significance. 

“Why do  _ you _ have to go? Why can’t it be uncle Scott that goes?”

Angela’s mouth trembled at the question before she sat down on the bed next to her son and held out her arms. Chuck looked like he was fighting within himself as to whether embrace his mother or push her away. He decided to accept the embrace as the peace offering it was and cuddled into his mother’s arms. Even though he was tall and lanky for his age and had to fold himself into it, he still did it. 

It wasn’t as often as he would like that he got to spend time with her. 

“Your dad was very special to me, Chuck and I  _ need _ to do this for him. If I keep on fighting this thing, then him dying would mean more than him leaving us. Your Uncle Scott can’t do it at the moment. But I can. That’s why.”

Chuck scrunched up his nose, an expression that was Herc all over, before nodding. 

“It’s not fair you have to go.”

Angela sighed heavily. 

“I know.”

~*~*~*~

Raleigh was already standing in the loccent chamber, dressed in a plain dress uniform that he had somehow managed to find in the back of his locker. A uniform that Allison had somehow managed to look presentable in the small amount of time that they were allotted to do so. The cuts and bruises on his face were still plainly visible despite the time, but at least he didn’t look like death warmed over. 

He shifted uncomfortably, trying to get comfortable in the unforgiving fabric when Angela Hansen showed up in  _ her _ RAAF uniform, with that glorious coil of auburn hair pinned to the back of her head like a crown. Her eyes widened slightly when she saw him standing there and Raleigh also clued in to why she was there. 

“Beckett, Hansen. I’m sure you are aware as to why I asked you to be here. If I am correct and you are compatible, you will be piloting the Mark V.”

It was then that the Marshall’s quietly authoritative voice floated over to them and they turned to look at him as he made his entrance into the loccent chamber. 

“Aren’t you taking a major risk in doing this? We have no common bond to initialize compatibility or maintain a neural handshake.”

Angela Hansen pointed out before Raleigh himself got the chance to. 

The Marshall only gave them a long, measured look before he spoke carefully. 

“Nevertheless, I think that you will be able to work together well. Get to the kwoon. We need to see how your physical compatibility matches up.”

He walked out of the room without a word, leaving them looking at each other. 

Angela was the one that spoke first. 

“We might as well try, even though I don’t think the bond of loss is enough to make us proper pilots.”

Raleigh’s left cheek twitched at the blunt statement, but he was glad that she was the one to bring it up. Yancy’s loss still clawed at him and he knew that her loss of a co-pilot and her husband was weighing on her as well. He could see the signs of her grief in the lines around her eyes and the stiff way that she held herself. 

He recognised the signs because he could see them when he looked at himself in the mirror. He could also recognise the desperation and the need for an anchor before she drifted away. Even though he knew that she had a young son and quite possibly the support of her brother in law, it wasn’t quite  _ enough. _

Just like it wasn’t enough for him to have Jazmine. 

He needed something else and when he met Angela’s eyes, he could see that hope that he would be that exact thing that they were both looking for. 

~*~*~*~*~

He knew that was the case when she had him pinned down on the mat, his stave broken and her chest heaving as she hovered over him. 

The butt of the stave was painfully digging into his chest and he knew that he was going to have a bruise not just from it, but also from the other points she had scored on him and he found himself relishing the pain and the discolourations that would come. 

It hadn’t been a long fight, which he had been expecting. What he hadn’t been expecting was for Angela Hansen to match him hit by hit and move by move. 

She had a rangy build. Sinewy muscles, long legs, and with generous breasts that were only just held contained in the navy tank she was wearing under the dress shirt of her uniform and he knew that he wasn’t the only man that was distracted when she started warming up in preparation to the bout. She handled the stave well, but he knew that she was more of a fist fighter. Most of the Australians and South Americans tended to favour street fighting methods, but they all had adapted to the kwoon requirements after a while.

He did the same at his end and tried to ignore the crowd that had gathered to watch them: The off duty fighters, the potentials that had been demolished by both of them and proven incompatible, the techies and the Marshall himself. As always, the man’s face was dead neutral as he waited for them to begin. 

He had scored the first point, but just barely. If she had moved out of the way, he wouldn’t have clipped her arm and gotten it. For her part, she had simply grinned and proceeded to catch him on the back of the leg and shoulder in a dirty move he hadn’t been expecting. 

Her grin got wider as she had walked away and his own eyes had narrowed as he went for it. Point as the stave glanced off her cheekbone, rupturing the skin, but she didn’t stop and did a complicated move that had him on his back with him looking up at her in mute admiration.

Their eyes met and Raleigh could see the exact time that it clicked in their minds. 

They were compatible. 

They were each other’s anchors.

He wasn’t aware of anything else as she moved the stave away and held out a hand to help him to his feet.

“Guess we’re co-pilots.”

He grinned and his grip tightened around her hand. 

“I guess we are.”

~*~*~*~*~

The dry run had him on his knees and she was on her hands and knees throwing up. They had been told that it was possibility of it happening, but they had been optimistic that it wasn’t going to happen to them. 

They were veterans (He was at four kills and she was at six at the time) and should have been able to handle it. Well, at least in theory. 

What they hadn’t counted on was that each other’s losses and grief would be so overwhelming that they would lose themselves into it and take half an hour to disentangle themselves and come out of the neural handshake that they had managed to initiate. 

“It’s going to get better next time.”

Tendo told them, his voice sympathetic as it had been the entire time that he had talked them through the tangle until they had found their way out. At least they hadn’t initialized any of the weapons in the dry run, which was a small blessing. Now though, they had to deal with the aftermath of the run.

And Raleigh knew it wasn’t going to happen with a simple heart to heart.

After the dry heaves had passed and Angela was done puking and they both got cleaned up, they walked to his cabin without a word. 

It was only then that he pulled out the last bottle of whiskey Yancy had bought and poured it out into two tin mugs and shoved one of them towards her.

She took it and drank it down without a word and slid it back to him. 

He refilled it and slid it back to her. This time, she drank it slower and Raleigh was glad to notice that her hands had stopped shaking and some colour had come back to her parchment white face. 

“I wondered, you know,” Raleigh started at the sound of her voice, rough and smokey with the whiskey, “Why you didn’t walk away after he had gone.”

He gave her a grin. Or tried to, since the sudden grief pushed back through his thin defences and only made him lower his face and press his wrist to his forehead before taking a long swallow of the whiskey and flinch at the burn it caused going down. Her face had gone pale again, their emotions still leaking after being in the drift.

It should have been awkward and they should have been running away from each other after that, but all that Raleigh felt the need to do was clear the air and actually address what they had seen before anything went forward. That was why he poured her the drinks and let her talk.He’d much rather hear her talk about Herc and her co-pilot than talk about Yancy. Or rather, he found that there was no point in talking about Yancy. She was, in her own words, already doing that for him.

“I saw why in the drift and I understood why the Marshall thought it would work with us. It was the same for me. I couldn’t walk away from this and let his death not mean anything. I had to go out there and fight. Or else there wouldn’t be anything that would keep me from reliving, over and over again, the time he was lost.”

Her voice was unsteady now with the sound of unshed tears and he made a small noise of agreement. 

“They were good men.”

She looked at him sharply before she nodded. 

“They were.They are.”

She stood up then and went back to her quarters. 

The next try was flawless.

~*~*~*~*~

For a split second, he thought he was dreaming about the last run he had with Yancy. It was all too similar to the last time: The alarms blaring their klaxons, him jumping out of bed once he had opened his eyes, the orange juice in the fridge. It wasn’t until he turned to look at the top bunk and found it empty that reality clicked in. Yancy was gone and he was going on this run with Angela Hansen in Striker Eureka instead.

For a moment, he froze as he looked at the kaiju and the stats that Tendo and the other techs had compiled in such a short time. It wasn’t a category three like knifehead. It was a category four and looked even more dangerous, with larger claws and a mouth with razor sharp teeth and bulk built for damage. 

He swallowed the orange juice in his mouth and squared his shoulders. This was the test that they had been waiting for. There was no room for failure. 

It was that realization that made him snap out of it and get dressed in the navy jumpsuit that had Striker Eureka’s bulldog on the back and laced up his boots fast. He was out of his quarters in minutes and ran into a grim-faced Angela on the way to suit up.

She glanced at him and smiled faintly when she took in the suit.

“Ready to put our baby to the test?”

Despite knowing she meant the jaeger, it still took him aback. Enough so that he only nodded at her before they separated to get suited up in the blue black scheme that was deemed appropriate for the Striker Eureka Jaeger. He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her. As close as if she was standing right next to him and the warmth of her skin seeping into his. 

It was so different when they entered the drift, not rough and harrowing like the first time. Not hard and a painful slam into it and each other’s minds like the second time. No. It was perfect. A continuation of the closeness that he had felt as they were getting ready. Angela’s mind was a steady weight in the back of his mind, just like Yancy used to be with him. 

He could have cried with relief at having it back again, the steadiness of purpose, the knowledge that  _ this _ was what he was meant to be doing, all of it was returned to him. Not in the exact and easy way as it had been with Yancy, but still perfect, nonetheless. 

His breath caught in his throat when he felt the weight of her gaze upon him and realized that it was his own feelings being reflected back at him. The silver-edged grief he had been distracted by the first time was softened and it was a line in her psyche. It wasn’t going to be gone, but it had smoothed down and healed considerably since the last time. 

Angela turned to look at him then, her smile small and tight-lipped, but reflecting what he was feeling exactly. 

Tendo’s voice was on the comm and the moment was over. They had a Kaiju to fight.

END

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in my ongoing way to get through yet more writer's block and also to get through a grief that blind-sided me recently. I realized that despite writing many stories in the Pacific Rim fandom, I hadn't written anything about Raleigh's grief and I wanted to show the Hansen's grief through Angela and get the female perspective instead than the usual male grief. 
> 
> I also wanted to write something with a hopeful ending and the possibilities that can happen unexpectedly.
> 
> Proofed and edited, but if errors appear, they will be fixed.
> 
> Title is from "Roses" The Chainsmokers.


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